Peter Schweizer: Evidence Of Biden Family Bribery Schemes
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Welcome back to the Jason and Al's podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and you're going to love this week's conversation. I just tell you, you know, last week we interviewed Peter Schweitzer about him, his background, what he does, what he doesn't do, how he got there, kind of nerd that he is. But, you know, he's...

He's actually a really engaging, fun, happy person. I really appreciate my time with Peter Schweitzer. Again, I'm associated with the group that he runs called the Government Accountability Institute. But they have an array of professionals and investigators that really do illuminate some of the biggest problems and challenge with

with conflicts of interest and outright corruption that's happening within Washington, D.C. So today we're going to have a conversation with Peter, and we're going to talk about

the latest with Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and why it's so important. And, you know, some of you may have followed this as close as possible. Some of you may be confused by it because there's so many aspects to this story. But that's why this is going to be an important podcast, because we're going to be able to walk you through why this should be such a national concern and the evidence that's behind it. So that's the intention here.

We're going to kind of just quickly get right into that. I know there's all kinds of things happening in the news and the stupid and everything, but this has a unique combination in that this is the news, but it's also highly stupid, but it's also playing out in real time. And, you know, you hear a lot from the presidential candidates talking about, you know,

oh, we're going to clear out the Department of Justice, we're going to fire Director Wray, we're going to fire the Attorney General. There needs to be, in my personal opinion, a systemic cleansing of the Department of Justice because it's less than 20% of America actually believes that they are honest, candid, and doing the things that we need the Department of Justice to do. We've got to get past that. We've got to have Lady Liberty, Lady Justice,

with a blindfold on and prosecuting those cases, regardless of whether your name is Biden or Clinton or anybody else, you've got to be able to have confidence that your Department of Justice is going to equally and fairly dive into these issues. So, again, it's this unique combination of news and the stupid that

The best way to do this is to bring on Peter Schweitzer himself, and let's just dive right into it. So let's dial up Peter Schweitzer.

Hello. Peter Schweitzer. Hey, Jason Chaffetz calling again. Hey, Jason. Great to hear your voice again. How are you doing? Well, hey, I call you a lot. So thanks for continuing to answer. I checked the phone ID and I felt like I was in the mood. So all kidding aside, good to see you. Well, listen, last week, the last podcast I did with you, really insightful, a lot of fun talking about you and your

you know, your journey moving forward from being quite the nerd who, although he cooked a lot of French fries and McDonald's, um, did some very important research. You've written a bunch of books. You got a new book coming out in January that I'm really intrigued about reading and seeing. Um,

But we thought this week we would talk a little bit more in depth about something you and I have talked about quite a bit. You have done the research on it and you have looked at it and you know as well as anybody. And that is the corruption that's been unfolding right before our eyes recently.

with the Biden family. And, you know, you'd never want to be in this position. You want to go and look at it and say, well, you know, that's plausible. And, you know, maybe. But this has turned out to be so out of control and so obvious. But I want to walk through some of the details that maybe a lot of people don't realize and talk a little bit more in depth about not just Hunter Biden, but it is much broader than Hunter Biden.

Yeah, I think in some respects, the way that media has handled this, I'm not talking about the mainstream media that kind of has ignored it. But even those outlets that have covered it have really focused singularly on Hunter and some of Hunter's personal problems. You know, Hunter to me is.

the symptom or the reflection of the broader problem, which is that, you know, Joe Biden during his public service career now spanning, you know, what, 50 years in the U.S. Senate and as vice president, now president of the United States, erected a system within the family to fund the family, enrich the family through public service.

It's not unique in this respect. There are other political families that have done it. But I think, Jason, what makes this one different is, number one, the amounts of money, which is tens of millions of dollars. But number two, that it's coming really from overseas. I mean, this is not a case of a senator resigning.

Republican senator from Missouri who had three members of his family that were registered lobbyists at the same time, Senator Roy Blunt, you know, and I've criticized him for that. But those were all foreign entities. That's the kind of unfortunate rank and file corruption that we see too much of in Washington. What the Bidens have done is globalized it in such a way to where now we're talking about foreign oligarchs and even foreign governments

having the ear and being able to get and expect favors from our leaders. And that, to me, makes this of a magnitude far worse than anything we've seen. So based on the research that you've done and the Government Accountability Institute, of which I'm associated with along with you, but you run, it's run by you. What's the estimate these days as to the amount of money, the magnitude of money that we're talking about here?

So if you look at the Hunter Biden laptop and then you look at the so-called suspicious activity reports that have been released by first by Senator Grassley and Johnson in the Senate and now with the House Oversight Committee.

You have $31 million approximately that came from China. I say approximately because $20 million of that relates to an equity stake that Hunter Biden had in a Chinese company. We don't know the exact amount, but...

The good estimate from the University of Chicago Business School is it was worth $20 million when he sold it. So it's $31 million just from China. Now, if you look at Ukraine, we know that Burisma sent him another $4 or $5 million. We know that millions came from Russia. We know that there are millions that also came from Romania. So we're talking mid-tens of millions of dollars here.

The number could be much higher. That's the problem. And it doesn't just involve Hunter Biden. It involves James Biden, who is Joe Biden's brother. It involves other members of the family who also received cash transfers from these deals. And I think ultimately it's going to we're going to find evidence that there was money that directly benefited Joe Biden in this as well.

Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. You start to go through, you look at Haley Biden, you know, she's a school counselor. Why was she getting any money from overseas? You look at Joe Biden's grandkids, you know, at one point via Romania, they get from Louis Freeh, who is working in association with Hunter Biden. Yes, the former FBI director in the Clinton administration.

The kids get the grandkids get one hundred thousand dollars deposited into their account. Now, I don't know. I bet he just doesn't even report that story. That is that is a compelling story. Why grandkids would get one hundred thousand dollars.

Absolutely it is. And look, to be crystal clear about this, you know this, Jason, but maybe a lot of people in the audience don't because the the team Biden position is basically, well, Joe Biden didn't get any money, so there's nothing to see here to be.

clear bribery does not just entail the politician gets paid. If family members are getting paid, if money's being put into a foundation run by family members, that is all bribery as much as if Joe Biden pocketed every single penny that was collected from China and Romania and Ukraine and Russia. So

You know, the fact that we're talking about the grandchildren, you know, a daughter, a son, a brother are are getting these large payments. If Joe Biden is, in fact, doing things in favor of getting that money. And I think there's clear evidence that he did. That is bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. You know, if you look at general bribery statutes.

So to me, it is crystal clear that we have now evidence that criminal conduct has taken place. That's not a term that I used before. We first reported on this back in 2018. Never said it was criminal because it was too much. We didn't know. I just said it looked bad and it was corrupt.

But it's pretty clear now, based on what the committee has done, this is criminal conduct. This is bribery that the Bidens have engaged in. And I think we have some very serious issues we've got to resolve in this country as to how we're going to handle this.

Yeah. And the traditional media, which is a totally different subject. I don't want to get off the rails on that, but they're non-reporting their lack of intellectual curiosity is doing the country a great disfavor. Because if you compare that to Donald Trump and how they treated, you know, they put the Donald Trump Jr. on the cover of Time magazine saying caught red handed for one minute.

One, 20-minute meeting with somebody he'd never met before and never took any money or anything from is every...

but had to answer all the congressional questions and get interviewed and all that. Again, I don't want to get off the rails on this. I think this is what's bothering America though, is the two-tier system of justice, that they are not seriously investigating this. They're treating it totally separate because it is a Biden. But I want to try to stay specific to how this got on the radar, how it started, and

And obviously the laptop has given a treasure trove of information that we wouldn't have had otherwise. And I'm not talking about the salacious, you know, the...

I mean, it's downright pornographic and, you know, all the stuff that he did with prostitutes and videotaping himself and the drug use. I mean, it is disgusting. And it's not just a couple of files. It's chock full of that. But I want to talk about the actual bribery and corruption process.

Um, when did this start? How did, how did this show up on the radar? And, um, you know, you know, you've Hunter Biden did this, he's done an interview or two and he admitted that, you know, he probably wouldn't have any gig if not for his last name being Biden. But when did this really kind of start and come into play?

Well, so, you know, we ran across in 2016 some very, very interesting accounts of Hunter Biden trips to China. And I say interesting accounts. These were Chinese social media accounts. And, you know, we saw a picture. There was Hunter Biden. It was a picture from 2011. Hunter Biden in China. And he's there with probably 10 people.

Chinese officials. And there is the son of the vice president sitting with the equivalent in China of the treasury secretary, the head of the Federal Reserve, the head of Goldman Sachs, the head of JP Morgan, the head of Bank of America, name any big financial institution. They're all there meeting with Hunter Biden, the son of the vice president.

And I thought, this is weird. OK, this is odd. He has no background in finance. He has no expertise in finance. So we started looking more. And what we discovered was that, you know, when Joe Biden had been inaugurated in January of 2009, vice president, the United States, Hunter Biden started a new business just a few months later. Up until that point, he had been a lobbyist.

lobbying on behalf of Delaware entities, and he was effectively lobbying his father's office, even though he would say, "No, I didn't lobby my father's office." That's what he was doing. Now here he was setting up a "international finance business," even though he had no background in finance, and he was suddenly meeting with the top officials in China. The only reason he's doing that is he's the son of the vice president.

And then we started to piece together who were the people he was actually doing deals with. These were not, you know, entrepreneurs who had resisted the communist regime and were, you know, these were guys that were juiced in with the Chinese political apparatus.

So I published a book in 2018 called Secret Empires. The book came out, hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And there were some murmurings from reporters. I had lunch with a reporter at the New York Times who covers China. And he said, interesting book. I had revelations in there on Mitch McConnell. And they did, in fact, end up doing a story on Mitch McConnell's ties to China.

But he told me, he said, well, you know, Joe Biden, he's kind of out of politics. But if he runs for office, this is in 2018, if he runs for office again, we'll cover this, which, of course, they didn't, which they didn't do. So that's kind of what happened to the story. I mean, Trump bought it up, brought it up in the 2020 election. It was covered by Fox and other news outlets.

didn't get mainstream media coverage. Then you had the laptop emerged in October of 2020. That kind of blew everything wide open. It didn't affect the 2020 election, of course, because it was suppressed by social media, by the mainstream media. But we took the laptop and we studied it. We studied every single text, every single email that was sent.

And it allowed us to really add even more meat to the bones. And it allowed us to confirm not just that these relationships and these business deals that happened, but the amount of money. Because in those emails...

There were messages from Chinese businessmen saying, hey, Hunter, I wired you the $5 million into your account. So you were able to actually confirm and quantify the flow of the money. So that's kind of the laptop really stood on our shoulders and took this story to another level. And here we are today with congressional committees, with subpoena powers,

doing the work that should have been done a long time ago, but now with the Republicans in majority is actually happening. So it's very gratifying to see where it's going. And I think Comer is doing an excellent job in propelling this story forward. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Peter Schweitzer right after this.

The Fox True Crime Podcast presents Crimes on Campus, sharing chilling stories of scandal, corruption, and murder. New episodes available every Tuesday this month. Listen and follow at foxtruecrime.com.

Yeah, Chairman Comer, my second favorite chairman of the House Oversight Committee. I say that with a big smile because I used to chair that committee. Yes, you did. He's doing a fantastic job. I mean, and really only in about seven months' time, given where his starting point was. And working, trying to extract documents from an administration that is totally conflicted, total conflict of interest. But

You know, one of the deep concerns, and I kind of want to go around the horn of the world and talk about the different areas, but let's stay focused on China for a moment. Not only is it the flow of money, but talk to us about the ties. It's not as if you have private organizations in China. They're all tied into the government, which means that

They're also tied into the national security or intelligence operations around the world or within the Chinese world. And talk to us about the super chairman and the concerns and the question marks involved.

and the why Americans should be so concerned about it. It's not just Hunter Biden and with Joe Biden, you know, in support opening doors for legitimate business deals, but the proximity to the intelligence side of the equation, it really does scare me. Yeah, it should. It should scare everybody. And that's one of the points I try to make is this is not just a corruption story. It's very clearly a national security story, because what you have to look at is this. The

The Bidens have received tens of millions of dollars from the Chinese. We believe it's hard to know the exact number. We believe it's about thirty one million dollars. It's at a minimum tens of millions of dollars. But you look at in exchange for all of that money, there's nothing discernible in terms of a legitimate business service that Hunter Biden or the Biden family perform for any of it.

So why is this money arriving to them? And then the second thing you have to look at is who's actually sending the money. There's basically three or four Chinese businessmen that are responsible for making these deals happen. Each and every one of those businessmen has ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. And I don't say that loosely. So you look at Che Fang, Hunter Biden calls him the super chairman. He says at one point on the laptop,

I don't believe in the lottery anymore, but I believe in the super chairman. And his name is Che Fang. Che Fang is the one who arranged this equity stake in this Chinese investment fund funded by the Chinese government. Well, at the exact same time that Che Fang is setting up Hunter Biden in this sweetheart lottery like deal, he's

He is also business partners with the vice minister of state security, which is China's spy apparatus. So and that guy's name was Ma Jian. So literally the same guy who is putting this money in Hunter Biden's pocket would then get circulated throughout the Biden family. That same guy is business partners with the with the vice minister, who, by the way, is responsible for recruiting foreign nationals to spy on behalf of China.

That's kind of freaky, right? That's kind of scary. But then let's move on to the next one. Henry Zhao. Henry Zhao, an investment guy, sends $5 million to Hunter Biden. We know this because it's on the laptop. We know this because of the suspicious activity reports, wire transfers that have been reported by the Senate. Henry Zhao sends $5 million to Hunter Biden. He sends that from a company called Harvest, right?

And one of his business partners in Harvest is the daughter of the former minister of state security who runs the entire spy apparatus of China. So now you've got deal number two. And then you go to deal number three. This is Yao Yiming, who's the head of CEFC, that Chinese energy company. He sends some six million dollars to the Bidens. Again, we know that because we have the financial transactions banking records.

Well, who is Chairman Yi, as Hunter calls him, that sends six million dollars to the Bidens? The job he had before he took this gig at the energy company was running an organization that everybody in the Western world knows is a front organization for Chinese military intelligence.

So the question is, Jason, how is it that of all the businessmen in a nation with more than a billion people are the only businessmen that Hunter Biden does business deals with? All have these levels of ties to the very top of the Chinese intelligence establishment. That to me makes this a challenge.

Potential espionage spy story that that a foreign intelligence service may have leverage over the first family of the United States because they have provided these funds. There's been no legitimate business service performed in favor of it. What did they get for that money?

That is the question that I think needs to be asked and takes this to be just not a terrible corruption story, but a national security story. No, absolutely. This is the deep concern and you can't take it lightly. I mean,

Not only did Hunter Biden accompany Joe Biden on Air Force Two to go to China, but there's also this strange report. I think it was Senator Johnson who originally found this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's done great work on this as well as Senator Grassley. And Hunter Biden at one point takes a trip to China, but sheds off his Secret Service protection. Explain, I mean, what's the what's going on there?

Well, and again, the timing here is is is weird, to say the least. Yeah. Hunter Biden had Secret Service protection when he traveled overseas. And I would say anybody who has done business in China knows the security challenges that any Western traveler has going to China. And not to say anything, if you're the son of the sitting vice president of the United States.

But in the summer of 2014, this is after the China deal start to come to fruition. He starts getting money. Hunter Biden goes to the Secret Service and says, I don't want you traveling with me overseas anymore. And they stop. Now, you know, part of the surprise to me here, Jason, is.

This would have certainly been reported to Joe Biden, the vice president, why the vice president wouldn't say to his son, look, out of prudence, I'm going to make this easy for you. You got to go to if you go to China, you got to go with Secret Service protection. If you don't want Secret Service protection, then don't go to China.

But that was never relayed. So Hunter Biden went wide open without security protection to China. And we don't know what he was subject to during those trips. Any businessman will tell you they've heard stories of their colleagues being monitored, being, you know, attempts to compromise them in all sorts of ways.

And yet here is Hunter Biden saying, I want to effectively go there without any protection when I'm visiting China. It's, again, another enormous concern and another enormous red flag. Now, look, as I I went as a member of Congress a couple of times to China, they wouldn't allow us to have mobile phones communications. We had to put them in.

special, it's kind of classified, I can't really talk about it, but they basically took our phones from us. We had to be exceptionally careful what we did, who we interacted with, under constant surveillance, not only videos and photos, but audios, including in our hotel rooms. I mean, it's a massive intelligence attack.

opportunity to be on Chinese soil. And the Secret Service, they're there not just to protect you from getting kidnapped or somebody, but to protect you in all ways. And really what they're supposed to be doing is they don't want the president, in this case Barack Obama, to be put in a compromised situation where he has to make very difficult decisions about

That's why they're there. That's why they get the kids and grandkids and others. They don't want to have to have this type of situation. And so nobody really knows what Hunter Biden was doing for all that time that he spent in China without any protection whatsoever.

Right, exactly. And again, I mean, to me, Joe Biden, you know, especially when you start to get into 2014, 2015, 2016, Joe Biden's aware that his son has these substance abuse issues. He knows he's going through these personal issues, you know, in his marriage and whatnot.

That would only, to me, heighten the fact that you as a father would say to your son, look, if you're going to go to business in China, you're going with the Secret Service. End of discussion. You never see any of that with Joe Biden. And that's why I think it's important to realize as much as some Democrats want to say, well, this is just Hunter kind of off doing his thing.

Father and son were in regular communication. It's very easy for the father to say, we're putting up guardrails, okay? You're starting this new international business, that's fine. Seek business in Berlin. Seek business in Tokyo. Don't go to China. Don't go to Ukraine. Don't go to Russia, these highly corrupt areas. But no guardrails were ever put in place. And I think the reason it's becoming increasingly clear is that Joe Biden was effectively a participant in this.

He saw what the model was. He knew where the money was. And he would prefer to not have his son be subject to Secret Service protection because it gives his son a greater ability and latitude in these in these transactions to speak openly and frankly, and to know that no federal officer is listening to him.

You know, the excuse here that you hear from the Democrats and a lot in the traditional media is, oh, well, Joe Biden didn't benefit personally. There's no evidence, you know, as Joe Biden himself said, never participated, never had a discussion with his son about these business dealings. Certainly didn't profit. I mean, they're moving goalposts on what the standard here is. But Joe Biden in China with his son in tow,

courtesy of the United States taxpayers, you, me, and everybody else paying their way. Not only did he just shake hands with people, but there was a lot more interaction than they originally said there was.

Yeah, I mean, the lurking question with all of this, Jason, is if if there was nothing that Joe Biden did that was wrong, why have you repeatedly for years lied about these interactions and lied about the relationships? I mean, they initially said he wasn't even aware of his business dealings. When Secret Empires first came out, they said, this is ridiculous. There were no foreign deals. Joe Biden didn't even know about them.

Then they transitioned to, well, he was aware of them, but he never at any time discussed it with his son or met any of the business partners. That was a complete lie. And the point is,

It would have been very if they're saying that there's nothing wrong with this, there's nothing that that that looks bad or that is bad. Why not come out and say, yeah, Hunter was doing deals in China. Yeah, I shook the guy's hand. There's something wrong with that. That's not what they've done. They've they've consistently changed and shifted. And we're now at a point when it comes to China and when it comes to Ukraine, where you can look at very particular policy positions that Joe Biden has taken that

absolutely clearly benefited those that Hunter Biden was doing business with and that Hunter Biden received payments from these individuals when those policy decisions were made. So again, when they say that Joe Biden never personally benefited to have your son, your grandchildren and your brother make millions of dollars is absolutely according to corruption laws, according to bribery laws is absolutely absolutely

a personal benefit and is the same as if he took all the money himself. Not only did Hunter Biden and the Bidens extract the money out of China and these other countries, China, we believe is the biggest amount, but Hunter Biden's business partners were given untold access to

to the White House, Jeff Cooper at one point traveling on Air Force Two, going into Mexico to try to close a deal. The number of White House visits kind of go through the list, if you can, Peter, off the top of your head of who these characters are and what they were able to do.

Yeah, there were a couple of other people that were in business with Hunter. We've heard from Devin Archer, of course, who is going to jail on an unrelated charge, although that was a financial bond scheme that involved an entity that Hunter Biden was also partners in. But for some reason, he was never charged.

But you have Devin Archer, you have Jeff Cooper. And again, if you look at the laptop, there's just a goldmine of how this operated. I mean, there's a famous email. I remember sharing it with you when you called me when we found it. You called me and said, this is unbelievable. Is Hunter...

talking to a gentleman who's a member of a very wealthy family in Mexico, and he's writing on Air Force Two, and he says in the email, I'm flying in on Air Force Two. I expect you to be at the tarmac when I arrive with my father. I've done everything that you've asked me to do. I've got you meetings in the vice presidential residence. I got you meetings in the White House.

And why are you not giving me the deals that you said you were going to be giving me? I mean, he's berating him. He drops the F-bomb. And it clearly demonstrates that this was transactional. You get access. We help you with what you need done in Washington. In exchange, you are going to grease us into deals that

In your country, you see that in Mexico, you see that in Ukraine, where Burisma, the energy company paying Hunter Biden a million dollars a year,

Actually, at one point, you know, Hunter starts collecting the money. He's not doing a lot. We now know based on emails that the Burisma officials are saying, hey, you know, what are you going to do for us? And then Hunter springs into action. He gets a meeting with his father. The Burisma executives are complaining about the prosecutor, this prosecutor. And can we get the prosecutor fired?

We know based on Devin Archer's testimony that that the Brins executives and Hunter actually called Joe Biden to say, can we do something about the prosecutor? And of course, we have Joe Biden bragging that he is the one that got the prosecutor fired by Trump.

basically extortion telling the ukrainian government until you fire this guy you're not going to get a billion dollars in usa all of that indicates the the biden business model and it's really to me a disgrace how the mainstream media has avoided this issue all you need to do is look at the polling today congress has very low ratings in terms of trust as an institution

There are only a couple that are lower. One of them is the mainstream media, and they have inflicted this upon themselves by refusing to be honest and transparent with the American people about what's really going on in the country. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Peter Schweitzer right after this.

And overseas, because, you know, one of the stories that really, really bothers me is the one that came out of Romania, where you have this person who,

I can't pronounce his name, who's essentially up on his own bribery charges, but somehow gets connected up with Hunter Biden. And Hunter Biden says, hey, he has a smart idea. If we're going to lean on the Department of Justice, let's bring in Louis Freeh. He's a friend of ours. Louis Freeh being the former FBI director under the Clinton administration and his job was...

was to lean on the Department of Justice so they would lean on the Romanians to go soft in this prosecution. Well, they were kind of late to the game.

This guy was still convicted for bribery there in Romania, but there was a lot of money that flowed. And from that, that's where this $100,000 goes into Joe Biden's grandkids account as a thank you for referring business and doing business. And, you know, when Louis Freeh says, hey, I'm helping out the Biden's,

And, hey, you remember me here over here at the Department of Justice. We need to make some calls into Romania. I mean, how are they going to react to that? And it just shows this incestuous relationship and this further feeds the concern that the Department of Justice is corrupt and

that it's compromised and that it's doing things that nobody else would be able to do unless you're paying millions of dollars and an untold amount of money. And you get somebody like a Hunter Biden or Joe Biden to call and lean on and say, yeah, go do this. This will be a good thing.

Yeah, it really isn't astonishing. And I think one of the things that I overlooked for years was the really the relationship between Joe Biden and the Department of Justice federal law enforcement community. So what do I mean by that? Well, Joe Biden for a long time was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, or he was that, you know, the senior ranking member when they were in a minority or he's a senior member.

All of the major legislation involving reform, enhanced powers, the budget for the Department of Justice goes through Joe Biden's committee. He has a lot of friends. He did a lot of things to help build up the Department of Justice in terms of budget and responsibility and scope, et cetera. Same thing with the FBI. I think that is a huge factor here. And I think a guy like Louis Freeh is a classic example of

What we're talking about, he was the FBI director during the Clinton years. He leaves his FBI director. Where does he go? He goes to Wilmington, Delaware, to set up his consulting firm. He sends his kids to a private school there where Joe Biden, as a senator, happens to have a long history.

Senator Biden is even on the finance committee of this school where Louis free is sending his kids. They know each other from, you know, the budget and law enforcement conversations they had when Joe was in the Senate on the judiciary committee. And they built up this close friendship. And then when Louis free is in the private in private business,

Hunter Biden learns about this corrupt Romanian oligarch who, by the way, made a fortune. This is the allegations behind the corruption charges. Made a fortune because he got a tip off and bought the land and money.

that our new U.S. embassy was eventually built on in Bucharest. So there could have been a bilking of taxpayers involving here. And Hunter Biden starts getting, I think it's $60,000 a month from this guy. And what does he do? He ropes in a former FBI director

to say, hey, let's help this corrupt guy get restrictions removed because he's been charged in Romania. So that restricts his activities in the United States. Let's help a guy out. I mean, that's really where a former FBI director has gone. And the Bidens, as you said, were enriched because of it. It's it's a remarkable ugly face, but

of the sort of corruption that we're seeing at the Department of Justice. Yeah. And I don't know how you deny that Joe Biden's involvement, because I think you're right. If you look at the proximity, there's no way that Louis Freeh becomes the FBI director unless Joe Biden gives the thumbs up. It's impossible given his high ranking position. Remember, Joe Biden was elected in 1972. Right.

And he had been in the Senate quite a bit and focused on the Judiciary Committee. There's no way that Louis Freeh gets into that spot. And if you look at the email traffic that goes back and forth between Louis Freeh and Hunter Biden, hey, tell your dad I said hi. Oh, I saw him from a distance. Didn't have a chance to thank him personally, but, you know, I want to keep doing business with y'all. That kind of stuff, you read through it, it is so painfully obvious. But again...

I think the Oversight Committee is overwhelmed with the amount of information and data. Let's pivot here because we only have so long that we can go on this podcast, but where should the investigation go next? Where does it go next?

Well, I think we had very compelling testimony from Devin Archer, one of Hunter Biden's business partners. There are others that come forward that I think we need to hear from the additional business partners. I also think that eventually they're going to call and need to call Hunter Biden to testify before the committee. But I also think there are some very important forensic tools that

They should be using. I don't know if the committee has subpoenaed them, but I think they should. One of them is this telephone, this telephone that we know based on a laptop that Joe Biden carried around while he was vice president of the United States.

important thing. It's not a government phone. It's not even Joe's personal phone. It's a phone paid for by Rosemont Seneca Partners, which is Hunter's business that is involved in all these illicit transactions.

The committee, I hope they have, needs to subpoena those phone records because I think it's going to offer a lot of insight into evidence as to who Joe Biden was talking to on this back channel, how often he was talking to Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden's business partners. Was he, in fact, taking calls?

on this unsecured private line paid for by his son's business, was he taking calls from foreign businessmen that were business partners to Hunter Biden? Did he take a phone call from Burisma? You have this F1023 out there describing, allegedly, this bribery scheme in which Burisma executives

say they sent $10 million to the Bidens, five to Joe, five to Hunter. And the claim is they have phone recordings of Hunter Biden, sorry, of Joe Biden, two of them,

It could very well have taken place on this phone. So I hope they're going to subpoena those phone records. I don't. There have been criticism of the committee that they're going too slow. I think they're going at the right pace. Thoroughness is important here. I think they've done a very good job of not exaggerating what they have, reporting what they have. And I think that as things move closer to the center of gravity here, which is Joe Biden, we're going to see that

Actually, he was the beneficiary in some indirect ways of funds flowing to him courtesy of these foreign business deals. And I think then it's going to become very, very difficult for Democrats to continue to insist in this retreat action they've been engaged in now for five years. You know, what's the next defense? Well, he may have gotten paid, but it wasn't that much. I mean, that's that's really all they got left, Jason, at this point.

Yeah, no, this is what's disgusting about the process and what's happening here. If you're 80 years old and you can help your brother, your son, your grandkids, you're telling me that's not a benefit to somebody who's 80 years old and been in government since 1972? Obviously, he wasn't for a few years there. He did get a book deal. He did do some other things there.

But come on, you have two big mansions and everything else. That's such a lame excuse, because if it was anybody else, anybody on the Republican side of the aisle, they would have been been smothering this. Absolutely. But there has been some decent reporting out there by, you know, I think Fox News, Fox

uh, the New York post, the daily mail, others have done it, but you know, until you actually exhaust this and run it to the ground. Personally, I think I don't want to put you on the spot personally. I think they need to do an impeachment inquiry. That's not an impeachment, but that gives some power and weight to the subpoenas that would be issued. Uh,

By the oversight and potentially the judiciary committee there in the House of Representatives, I think it'll be much more compelling if Abby Lowell, the attorney for Hunter Biden, wants to wrap him up in court and deny access to these types of documents. I think a compelling thing before a judge would be that there was a vote in the House in order to get that.

And by the way, I have this question that comes up a lot of times and they say, oh, how come we haven't seen Hunter Biden? Why don't you do a Hunter Biden? Oh, you're just waiting for the election. No, the last person you call, the very last person you call is the actual subject who would know this. And that's the person. Once you get all the ducks in a row, when you have all the information, then you call up Hunter Biden. I think that is what happens last in this process.

I don't want to wrap up yet because I want you to explain to people a very important person in this process, Eric Schwerin, because his proximity to the Bidens, what he's done in the past, his visits to the White House and the vice president's residence, he is a key factor in this.

Yeah, he is. So Devin Archer, who we've heard the testimony from, and I think it was very compelling and powerful. He was the kind of the architect, I think, of a lot of the deals, how they tried to structure them, how they tried to structure the business. Eric Schwerin is the guy who moves the money around.

And you see that in the emails, in the laptop. I mean, you see Eric Schwering emailing Hunter Biden. Yeah, your dad called me about the mortgage. Your dad called me about repairs that were being done at the house. You know, your dad got his refund check.

I'm putting it in your account because your dad owes you the money. Eric Schwerin is the guy that is communicating with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden on their own personal financial matters, as well as the financial matters of Rosemont Seneca Partners.

So he will know a lot about the flow of money, where it went, who it went to and when it went. The understanding that I have in having talked to some of Hunter Biden's former business partners is that Eric Schwerin and Hunter Biden had a massive falling out, as Hunter Biden seems to have had with a lot of his business partners. So Schwerin.

early reports from Congressman Comer are that he's been cooperating with the committee. So I think his testimony is going to be very interesting. Again,

The Bidens operate their business in a way that is very family specific and focused. So I don't want to exaggerate the fact that he's going to be able to spill all the beans. I think there's still money that is moving around within the family that Eric Schwerin doesn't know about. But I do think that he will offer some real insight and perhaps some forensic documents

that indicate how the flow of money was handled. And they'll be able to answer questions that come up in the laptop, for example, as to Hunter Biden paying some of his father's bills while his father was vice president. Now, that's not legal. As you know, as a former member of Congress, you can certainly receive gifts, reasonable gifts from family members for your birthday or Christmas. But

Politicians cannot have their their lifestyle subsidized by family members. And it is very clear that at least on the laptop, we identified, you know, probably 50 to $60,000 in bills that Hunter Biden paid for his father. Schwerin can answer questions about how that arrangement was made, what other bills might have been made.

Or what are these joint accounts that you talk about? These are all, I think, important, legitimate questions that may open up other opportunities to subpoena even more financial records than we know about right now. Yeah, following the money and understanding how that works, because one of the concerns is that even Joe Biden himself kind of joked about, oh, really, where's the money? Like, ha ha, you're not going to find it is kind of how I read that.

You know, a lot of this money could, could, I'm not saying that there, but could be parked overseas. Absolutely. And outside the realm of where they're able to look. But I think when they exhaust the U.S. banking issues, when they go through all of the phone records, when they go through what they can get out in the United States.

and then start to go into transcribed interviews or flat out depositions. Again, a court reporter under oath

you know, record every document. And the way this works, having done it myself many times, is that you get an hour with your witness and then you take a little breath and the Democrats get to interview the witness for an hour. So it's balanced. It's different than how some of these other things have been done. But then you actually get to the nitty gritty. Then the researchers can go back and corroborate and they can ask other questions and unearth other documents.

These things always take too long. Like I wish they wouldn't take so long, but I think they're on the right path. And I mean, even just over the last 45 minutes of us talking about this very specifically, I,

There's still a lot more out there that we haven't even begun to discuss. No, you're exactly right. I mean, it's always been a complicated story in the sense that, you know, it involves, you know, foreign entities, all these LLCs, official duties, you know, you know, unknown phones. Now we know there were pseudonyms involved in emails. It's always been a complicated story. But again, I think the committee has done a very good job. I think the pace is good. Look,

This is a very, very important story, and we want the facts to come out right.

And that takes time. And I agree with you. We need an impeachment inquiry. And I think where you see where the inquiry goes and then questions about impeachment can be answered after you've done the investigation. But the evidence to me is compelling. We need to have the inquiry. We need more muscle behind the subpoenas. And we need to see where the evidence eventually takes us. Yeah, we're going to find out if Republicans have a backseat.

because it's going to need the full weight of the entire Republican conference, including those people that are in, you know, so-called Joe Biden districts.

to actually step up and do the right thing. And it requires leadership from Kevin McCarthy, the speaker, from Steve Scalise and others to actually say, okay, we're doing this, and we're going to follow the evidence. That's what you have to do. And that's what they didn't do with Donald Trump, but that's what they need to do if they're going to do it right with credibility and come up with a compelling strategy

fact pattern that can be demonstrably documented and shown as to what's happening. And what the Department of Justice is doing now, you know, the special counsel, I think is ridiculous. The statute says it should be somebody outside of government who's not conflicted. And guess what? They empowered somebody who's conflicted and does work at the Department of Justice. So, you know, this is the problem.

Yeah, it is. Look, I'm an optimist by nature. I know you are as well, Jason. The American people now is the evidence is coming out. The American people are starting to grasp what happened. There was just a few weeks ago, a Harvard Harris poll. This is not some conservative pollster. This is Harvard University and Harris pollster.

Close to 60 percent of the American people, including close to 60 percent of independents, believe that Joe Biden was involved in a criminal commercial enterprise that his son was running. That's close to 60 percent. That is a remarkable number. And I think that number is only going to climb because the media has got to be forced to cover this. It will become an embarrassing thing.

If you have an impeachment inquiry and readers of some of these publications don't even know what's going on because they're they've never reported what the underlying facts are. So I'm optimistic we will get the truth exposed. We will get it out there and then we will decide as a country, I think, what the next step is. And I do believe that it is possible.

pointing to bribery and bribery, of course, is mentioned as an impeachable offense. But we'll see where the evidence leads us. Yeah. Even if this is fully exhausted and Joe Biden steps down, isn't around,

you know, his runs his term out, it still needs to be run to ground no matter what. We can't allow these types of things to happen. It's exactly what our founders feared and it's exactly why this needs to be exposed for what happened. It's truth in its totality as best we can find.

Peter Schweitzer, you do some of the best work that's out there. Looking forward to your book coming out in January. But boy, you certainly have had some blockbusters thus far. Thanks for joining me on the Jason in the House podcast. Oh, this is a lot of fun, Jason. Thanks for inviting me. Well, that's Peter Schweitzer at his best. His diving deep into the facts, understanding what's happening, what's not happening, and

and then articulating it in such a way that it's understandable. And this is a huge, huge issue. We have to tackle this. We have to get after it. I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. It is a serious topic. It's a deep topic. It's an important topic.

Please, I would appreciate it if you could rate this podcast, if you would review the podcast, and make sure you join us next week. I want to remind people that they can listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus a subscription on Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Join us next week. We'll have another great guest that will be joining us. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House.

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